In a Dark, Dark Wood

6

FOR A MINUTE I didn’t understand. Had there been some horrible mistake? Was it possible she hadn’t invited me at all, and this was all Flo’s stupid idea?

‘It— I’m— y-your hen,’ I stammered. ‘Didn’t you—?’

‘I know that, silly!’ She laughed, a nervous gust of white breath in the cold air. ‘I meant, what are you doing out here? Are you training for an Arctic expedition or something?’

‘Having a run,’ I said, trying to make it sound like the most normal thing in the world. ‘It’s not that c-cold. Just a bit nippy.’ But I was cold now, standing still, and I ruined the last words by shivering convulsively.

‘Get in, I’ll give you a lift up to the house.’ She leaned across and opened the passenger door.

‘I’m … my trainers, they’re pretty gross—’

‘Don’t worry. It’s a hire car. Get in already, before we both freeze!’

I squelched round to the passenger side and got in, feeling the heat of the car strike through my cold, sweat-soaked thermals. The mud had penetrated my trainers. My toes were squishing inside the lining in a way that made me shudder.

Clare put the car back into gear and hushed ‘Single Ladies’ with a click of the mute button. The silence was suddenly deafening.

‘So …’ She looked at me sideways in the mirror. She was just as beautiful as ever. I’d been crazy to think ten years could have made a difference to Clare. Her beauty was bone-deep. Even in the dim light of the car, muffled up in an old hoodie and a giant snood-like scarf, she looked startling. Her hair was piled on top of her head in an adorably messy knot that spilled down over her shoulders. Her nails were painted scarlet, but chipped – not try-hard, no one could accuse Clare of that. Pitch-perfect, more like.

‘So,’ I echoed back. I had always felt like the poor relation in comparison to Clare. Ten years had changed nothing, I realised.

‘Long time no see.’ She was shaking her head, her fingertips tapping on the wheel. ‘But God, I mean … it’s good to see you, Lee, you know?’

I said nothing.

I wanted to tell her I was not that person any more – I was Nora now, not Lee.

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, the reason I hadn’t kept in touch was nothing to do with her – that it was me. Only … that wasn’t completely true.

Most of all, I wanted to ask her why I was here.

But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I just sat, staring up at the house as we wound closer.

‘It’s really good to see you,’ she said again. ‘So, you’re a writer now – is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. The words seemed strange and false in my mouth, as if I were lying, or telling stories about someone else, a distant relative perhaps. ‘Yes, I’m a writer. I write crime fiction.’

‘I heard. I saw a piece in the paper. I’m so— I’m really pleased for you. That’s amazing, you know? You should be very proud.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s just a job.’ The words came out stiff and bitter – I didn’t mean them like that. I know I’m lucky. And I worked hard to get here. I should be proud. I am proud.

‘What about you?’ I managed.

‘I’m in PR. I work for the Royal Theatre Company.’

PR. That figured, and I smiled, a genuine smile this time. Clare was always amazing at spinning a story, even at twelve. Even at five.

‘I’m … I’m very happy,’ she said softly. ‘And listen, I’m sorry we lost touch – seeing you … we had some good times, didn’t we?’ She glanced at me in the ghostly green light from the dashboard. ‘Remember having our first fag together?’ She gave a laugh. ‘First kiss … first joint … first time sneaking into an eighteen film …’

‘First time getting chucked out,’ I retorted, and then wished I hadn’t sounded so snide. Why? Why was being I so defensive?

But Clare only laughed. ‘Ha, what a humiliation! We thought we were being so clever – getting Rick to buy the tickets and sneaking through to the loos. I didn’t think they’d check at the screen door as well.’

‘Rick! I’d forgotten him. What’s he up to these days?’

‘God knows! Probably in prison. For underage sex, if there’s any justice.’

Rick had been Clare’s boyfriend for a year when we were fourteen or fifteen, a greasy long-haired twenty-two-year-old with a motorbike and a gold tooth. I’d never liked him – even at fourteen I’d found it bizarre and disgusting that Clare would want to sleep with a bloke that age, despite the fact that he could get into clubs and buy alcohol.

‘Ugh, he was such a creep,’ I said, before I thought better of it. I bit my tongue, but Clare only laughed.

‘Totally! I can’t believe I couldn’t see it at the time. I thought I was so sophisticated having sex with an older guy! Now it seems like … like one step away from paedophilia.’ She gave a snort and then an exclamation as the car bounced off a pothole. ‘Oops! Sorry.’

There was silence for a while as she negotiated the last and most rutted part of the drive, and then we swung onto the gravelled space at the front of the house, tucking in neatly between Nina’s hire car and Flo’s Landrover.

Clare turned off the engine and for a minute we just sat in the dark car, contemplating the house, with the players inside ranged like actors on a stage, just as Tom had said. There was Flo, beavering away in the kitchen, bending over the oven. Melanie was hunched over the phone in the living room, Tom sprawled across a sofa directly opposite the plate-glass window, flicking through a magazine. Nina was nowhere to be seen – out having a fag on the balcony, most likely.

Why am I here? I thought again, with a kind of agony this time. Why did I come?

Then Clare turned to me, her face lit by the golden light streaming from the house. ‘Lee—’ she said, at the same time as I said, ‘Look—’

‘What?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No, you go first.’

‘No you, honestly. It wasn’t important.’

My heart was beating painfully in my chest, and suddenly I couldn’t ask it any more, the question on the tip of my tongue. Instead I forced out, ‘I’m not Lee any more. I’m Nora.’

‘What?’

‘My name. I don’t go by Lee any more. I never liked it.’

‘Oh.’ She was silent, digesting this. ‘OK. So it’s Nora now, huh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ll do my best to remember. It’s going to be hard though – after, what, twenty-one years of knowing you as Lee.’

But you never knew me, I thought involuntarily, and then frowned. Of course Clare had known me. She’d known me since I was five. That was exactly the problem – she knew me too well. She saw through the thin, adult veneer to the scrawny, frightened child beneath.

‘Why, Clare?’ I said suddenly, and she looked up, her face blank and pale in the darkness.

‘Why what?’

‘Why am I here?’

‘Oh God.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I knew you’d ask that. I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I said auld lang syne and all that?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not that, is it? You had ten years to make contact if you wanted to. Why now?’

‘Because …’ She took a deep breath, and I was astonished to realise that she was nervous. It was hard to process. I’d never seen her anything less than totally self-possessed; even aged five, she’d had a stare that could make the most hardened teacher melt, or wilt, whichever she chose. It was, I suppose, why we’d been friends, in a strange way. She had what I craved: that all-encompassing self-possession. Even standing in her shadow I’d felt stronger. But not any more.

‘Because …’ she said again, and I saw her chipped, lacquered nails glint, red as blood, as her fingers twisted together and her nails caught the light from the house and reflected it back into the car. ‘Because I thought you deserved to know. Deserved to be told – face to face. I promised … I promised myself I’d do it to your face.’

‘What?’ I leaned forward. I wasn’t frightened, only puzzled. I’d forgotten my stained wet shoes, and the stench of sweat on my clothes. I’d forgotten everything apart from this: Clare’s worried face, filled with an edgy vulnerability I’d never seen before.

‘It’s about the wedding,’ she said. She looked down at her hands. ‘It’s about … it’s about who I’m marrying.’

‘Who?’ I said. And then, to make her laugh, to try to break the tension that was filling the car and infecting me, I said, ‘It’s not Rick, is it? I always knew—’

‘No,’ she broke in, meeting my eyes at last, and there was not a shred of laughter there, only a kind of steely determination, as if she were about to do something unpleasant but utterly necessary. ‘No. It’s James.’